Electronic gadgets – Programmed to break after warranty!
May 31st, 2008 . by adminThis has happened to all of us..
You buy some electronic gadget or equipment, a CD Player, a TV, a stereo, an iPod..
You use it during the warranty period with no problem whatsoever. Then after the warranty runs out, its usually only 1 year later, the thing breaks.
So I started wondering today.. Is it possible for a hardware manufacturer to design something on the circuit board to fail after so many uses?
Sure they could.. Even if the item doesn’t have the date set, it could be like this….
1. On the circuit board, it has a counter, and a tiny bit of flash memory. Everytime the device is turned on and used for more than 15 minutes, it increments the flash counter by 1.
In the worst case scenario, a device may be used 5 separate times per day, for 15 minutes or more each time. Times that by 2 years… (5 uses per day x 730 days = 5,110 uses)
So when the flash memory counter gets to 5,110, refuse to run. This way, in 2 years time (but not to the exact day, because everyone uses their device differently) — FAIL and stop working.
This way you are guaranteed that all devices you send out, will automatically have a certain lifetime age. Which will cause the person to be back in the marketplace looking for a replacement.
Now if all manufacturers followed suit, the manufacturers get richer, and the public gets poorer.
I can’t believe I’m the only one with this hair brained scheme. I just bet it has been implemented, tried, and tested out there…
Oh, one more thing. If the customer sends the unit in for repair, charge them the standard $400 repair fee, and reset the flash memory counter to 0, to make the device work, and give them another 5,110 uses..
Who knows, I might be on to something here.
I was listening to JJJ radio is Aus a couple of years ago and they were talking about this very subject. A person, who refused to give his name, rang in as he was an electrical design engineer whos job it was to not only design new technologies but to also design them to fail after either a certain time frame or amount of uses. He said that he and his colleagues were instructed to design flaws into the devices so that people had to buy new every couple of years otherwise the companies would not make money if their devices lasted too long. A lot of energy and greenhouse ‘heat’ could be saved if manufacturers (who use more power then any of us!) would produce longer lasting devices so that they didn’t have to use as much power to run their businesses as they wouldn’t need to produce as many units constantly. I realise there are other issues here of employment and such like but it is food for thought. A way around these design flaws is to always take the extended 3 year warranty!!